Scratch-off lottery tickets are well known in the art in which play indicia appear below a removable scratch-off layer. The player removes the scratch-off layer, thereby exposing the play indicia. If the play indicia meet the requirements of a winning ticket, then the player may claim a prize.
Lottery tickets vary in size but typical scratch-off lottery tickets have a single game printed on one side of the lottery ticket, although some lottery tickets have imprinted more than one game on the same side of the lottery ticket. The game or play side includes play indicia printed beneath a scratch-off layer and other graphics and information which may be relevant to the theme of the game and/or validation/authentication of the lottery ticket.
Efforts have been made to increase the number of games played on a single lottery ticket. One such approach has been to provide multi-panel tickets. The tickets are comprised of two or more panels connected together through fold lines in which the panels may be folded upon each other. However, each panel has a lottery game appearing only on a single side of the lottery ticket. The panels may be folded upon each other to reduce the space occupied by the lottery ticket. However, for each panel, there is a single lottery game with no provision for printing a lottery game on the reverse side of the lottery ticket or panel.
Recently, a technique has been developed to print lottery games on both sides of the lottery ticket. Such efforts have included forming a lottery ticket with a break-open or pull tab construction in which the lottery indicia is covered by a break-open window or pull tab typically made out of paper stock or cardboard. Break-open lottery tickets of the type discussed above are disclosed, for example, in Canadian Patent Document Nos. 2,066,489; 2,282,770; 2,282,777; 2,282,768; and 2,359,581.
Break-open lottery tickets require the formation of a break-open window in which two substrate sheets are laminated together. In order to play the game, the player must lift the break-open window to expose the lottery indicia. Break-open tickets are typically constructed by printing a sheet containing multiple combinations of lottery indicia thereon. The sheet is then cut into sections. The opposite side of the sheet includes prize categories, serial numbers, etc. A second sheet contains break-open windows or pull tabs which are formed in the card stock such that the break-open windows overlap the lottery indicia.
The break-open window type of scratch-off lottery ticket is advantageous because it provides the means of placing lottery games on both sides of a lottery ticket. However, such tickets are more expensive to produce than a typical one sided scratch-off lottery ticket in part because of the necessity of forming a break-open window. No one to date has been able to produce a lottery ticket in which scratch-off games appear on both sides of the ticket without requiring a break-open window because of the anticipated problems in manufacture. In particular, the problems with producing double sided scratch-off lottery tickets include extra layers needed to produce the ticket resulting in a higher rate of production rejection and inadvertent scratching. The scratch-off layers may adhere to production rollers contributing to the high rate of rejection of tickets.
Another problem is the characteristic shrinkage of the lottery card stock during production which can result in loss of capacity to register production on both sides of the ticket. If a technique for printing double-sided lottery tickets could be developed, the lottery tickets produced by such a process would increase the number of lottery games available to player on a single ticket, would make the playing of the game simple and would cost less to fabricate than break-open lottery tickets.